The GOP is Torching America—So Why Are Democrats Burning in the Polls?
Democrats vs. the Propaganda Machine: Strategies for Reclaiming the Narrative
The Republican Party is waging a full-scale war on democracy, equality, and the future of this country. They’ve gutted voting rights, sabotaged climate action, and turned the Supreme Court into a weapon against anyone not born with a trust fund. Yet, despite this demolition derby, Democrats—the only adults nominally in the room—are drowning under an unfavorability rating of 60%—the worst polling result in over two decades.
How does this make sense?
Simple. Propaganda works.
Like their carnival-barking con man standard-bearer, Republicans have perfected the art of misinformation. They have no policies that help the working-class majority to showcase, and they’ve never truly believed in the “Grand Experiment in Liberal Democracy.” So, they’ve honed their skills in deceit to maintain their chokehold on power.
Republicans Knowingly Spread Misinformation
Just look at the numbers. A study published in the “Journal of Marketing”, conducted by researchers Xiajing Zhu and Connie Pechmann, shows that Republicans are more likely to spread misinformation, especially when political polarization is high. Zhu stated that even when they know what they’re spreading is false, Republicans do it “because they strongly value their party winning over the competition."
In other words, Republicans have no qualms poisoning the discourse and tearing people apart because, for them, it’s all about “winning.” A true leader—and an actual patriot—would never call it “winning” to do nothing to improve the lives of their constituents while simultaneously robbing them of peace of mind and basic serenity by turning them against their fellow Americans with lies.
Red states consistently rank among the worst in nearly every quality-of-life measure. Instead of passing legislation to address the real needs of their constituents, Republicans leave them high and dry, cut their lifelines, and block their opportunities. The only “infrastructure” they build is a foundation of hate, division, and broken trust that no democracy can survive, much less thrive upon.
Republicans Choose Party Over Country. All. The. Time.
In MAGAtville, “E Pluribus Unum” is just Latin for “suckers and losers.” The more polarized things get, the more Republicans double down on the lies. They know it’s false but share it anyway because, for the modern GOP, “winning” is all that matters. Not truth. Not democracy. Not unity. Just “own the libs” while the “donor class” dismantles the promise of America.
Why wouldn’t they? Republicans are ideologues who fundamentally loathe government—especially the kind that emerged from the Liberal Age of Enlightenment.
Until they can rid themselves of pesky democracy for good, the GOP knows it has to whip up enough rage to get Americans to vote against the one party that, at the very least, believes in democratic government and tries to throw average people a lifeline.
Research shows that those who identify with the Republican Party are less committed to political equality and legal rights, and more willing to jettison democratic norms if it suits them. The strongest predictor of this anti-democratic sentiment is, unsurprisingly, ethnic antagonism and resentment over the political power and government resources going to immigrants, African Americans, and Latinos. This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature that drives the average Fox News viewers’ willingness to toss democracy out the window.
The Republican Party is now so cowed by a literal con man with a raging case of dictator-envy that they can’t muster the slightest courage to send this unfit malignancy into history’s trash heap. They’ve had chance after chance to do the right thing but chose to go along with the malignancy to keep themselves in their cushy jobs on Capitol Hill—not to “save” democracy from their convicted felon con man who activated a mob with lies and sent them to trash the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
Selling Out democracy for Personal Self-Interest is the Republican “Way”
So, here we are trying to bring the truth, doing all we can to make the one party actually passing infrastructure bills and student debt relief poll better than a wet sandwich, all while clinging to the hope that enough Americans will see through the con before it’s too late.
The answer isn’t just better policy—it’s psychological warfare.
We’re not just dealing with differences of opinion; we’re up against a relentless propaganda machine that doesn’t simply bend reality; it erases it and replaces it with whatever best serves their agenda.
Meanwhile, Democrats keep clutching their pearls and playing by Roberts Rules of Regular Order, as if the other side isn’t actively lighting the rulebook on fire. If Democrats don’t wake up and fight this fascist gaslighting with unapologetic force, we’ll keep losing ground to a movement that doesn’t care about facts, democracy, or the American people.
The GOP’s Gaslighting: Reality Has a Liberal Bias
Republicans have mastered the art of professional victimhood. They torch the village, then scream about the fire department’s “incompetence.”
Take the economy: After Trump’s $2 trillion tax handout to corporations spiked the deficit, GOP lawmakers spent years screeching about “Biden’s inflation.” Never mind that inflation is a global crisis, fueled by pandemic aftershocks and corporate price-gouging. But facts don’t matter when you’ve got Fox News, TikTok rage-baiters, and Elon Musk’s algorithm turbocharging every lie.
During the last campaign, even though Biden and Harris managed to create an economy that was the envy of the democratic world, a majority of Americans still blamed them for whatever economic pain they felt—while giving all the credit to Trump for the “stable” economy he inherited from Obama.
As always, members of the so-called “party of personal responsibility” only stick to that motto when trying to deny Americans health care. When it comes to taking responsibility for the disasters they create? Forget it.
Never mind that Republicans are, by every measurable standard, worse for the economy, Biden’s real economic gains just couldn’t break through the wall of right-wing propaganda and media both-sides-ism.
Here in reality, Trump so thoroughly botched the pandemic response that America suffered the worst COVID death toll in the modern world. He left office with the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover, yet the media flushed that little fact down the memory hole.
Propaganda isn’t just persuasion—it’s mass hypnosis. And in MAGAt America, reality is whatever the con man says it is, with the right-wing propaganda mill backing it up.
Democrats: The Party of “Hey, We Tried?
Democrats aren’t unpopular because they’re “too progressive” or “too moderate.” They’re unpopular because they’ve allowed Republican lies to define them and they refuse to weaponize truth.
Consider these Democratic wins:
$35 insulin caps (while the GOP sued to stop it).
First major climate bill ever (while red states criminalize protests against oil pipelines).
Record-low unemployment (while Republicans fire Americans and cut lifelines).
Over 14 million jobs created, including 800,000+ manufacturing jobs—while Republicans spent their days banning drag shows and trying to turn back the clock to 1953.
Infrastructure Week became a reality: Rebuilding roads, bridges, and water systems while Republicans race to cut ribbons on projects they voted against.
Broadband expansion to rural America: Once again, Republicans pat themselves on the back for a policy they voted against.
Free school lunches for kids, because apparently feeding children is “woke”—of course, Democrats had to do it over Republican objections.
Restored HBCU scholarships, because Democrats actually believe All Lives—including Black lives—matter.
And much, much more.
Instead of screaming about their victories at every opportunity, Democrats boast about how “bipartisan” something is—even when the majority of Republicans did nothing but obstruct, lie, distract, divide, and take credit for the successes they voted against.
What infuriates me to no end is that Democrats seem more interested in making the Republican party seem like a sane, palatable choice than the Republicans themselves. It’s as if the Democratic leadership is forever on a quixotic pursuit of appealing to the “disaffected” Republican voter, who they dream may wake up one day, turn off Rupert Murdoch’s poison, and vote Democratic.
Instead of being unapologetically fierce fighters, heirs of the New Deal policies that built the American middle class, the majority of Democrats seem to approach politics with all the passion of an NPR pledge drive.
If Trump has taught us anything, it’s that the American people want to vote for someone who, at least, seems to fight for them. Anyone with half a clue knows that Trump’s “forgotten man and woman”, “fight, fight, fight” rhetoric is as genuine as a degree from Trump University.
Dems, Please Start Channelling FDR
The only reason President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wasn’t elected in a fight landslide, was because he was dead—not because he pandered to the same Republican ideas that crashed the economy.
Democrats need to follow the example of FDR, our greatest modern president, and not miss an opportunity to remind the American people who is on their side. After his New Deal policies rescued the working class from the kiss-up/kick-down Republican policies that caused the Great Depression, FDR didn’t go around boasting that he had buy-in from members of the same party that tanked the economy. Quite the opposite. He never missed an opportunity to remind Americans which party left them on the breadlines and which one threw them a lifeline.
In 1944, to great applause and laughter, Roosevelt told an audience of union organizers,
“Although I rubbed my eyes when I read it, we have been told that it was not a Republican depression, but a Democratic depression from which this Nation was saved in 1933— that this Administration this one today – is responsible for all the suffering and misery that the history books and the American people have always thought had been brought about during the twelve ill-fated years when the Republican party was in power.
Now, there is an old and somewhat lugubrious adage which says: ‘Never speak of rope in the house of a man who has been hanged.’ In the same way, if I were a Republican leader speaking to a mixed audience, the last word in the whole dictionary that I think I would use is that word ‘depression!’"
It makes no difference that Democratic policies foster freedom and opportunity, the GOP cries “Marxism!” Their whole platform is nothing but emotional terrorism. To my eternal frustration, Democrats continue to take a strongly worded letter of concern to a no-holds-barred cage match.
The Disinformation Industrial Complex
The right’s propaganda machine isn’t just Fox News or Truth Social. It’s a multi-headed hydra of dark-money groups and hostile foreign actors funding the disinformation. American discourse is deliberately poisoned by Facebook meme farms hatched in the bowels of the Kremlin, and “local news” outlets like Sinclair Broadcasting, force-feeding pre-scripted GOP talking points to 70% of U.S. households.
Toss in TikTok’s algorithm (which favors right-wing content) and a Supreme Court that legalized lying in political ads, and you've got a perfect storm.
The proof is that a staggering 74% of Republicans believe Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen (it wasn’t). 64% of rural voters think Democrats “want to take their guns and Bibles.” Thanks to relentless fear mongering about crime and immigration, even voters who despise Trump’s racism think “he’ll keep them safe.”
F Your Feelings?
Majorities of Americans support infrastructure spending, drug price caps, abortion rights and stricter gun laws.
In other words, actual Democratic policies have broad, popular support.
Yet millions of Americans vote against their own interests because Republican messaging has decoupled policy from brand. “Democrat” has become a slur synonymous with “elitist” and “out of touch.”
Thanks to propaganda, it’s not about issues—it’s about identity. In a culture war, the “F your feelings” Republican voter chooses their feelings over facts.
“GOP TV”—Roger Ailes’ Dream Come True
Decades before Fox News became a gleam in Rupert Murdoch’s greedy eye, Roger Ailes was pitching the idea of a Republican propaganda machine to Nixon’s White House. In 1970, Ailes and Nixon’s cronies concocted “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News,” a blueprint for what would become Fox News and the right-wing media ecosystem drowning us today.
Nixon loved the idea, agreeing that Republicans needed "our own news" to lead a "brutal, vicious attack on the opposition."
The goal was to drown out the so-called “liberal media” and beam pro-administration talking points directly into American living rooms because, as the memo bluntly put it, “People are lazy. With television, you just sit-watch-listen. The thinking is done for you.”
“Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you.” - Roger Ailes memo to Nixon’s White House
To put this in context, at the time, America’s middle class was upwardly mobile, economically secure, and thriving thanks to FDR’s New Deal policies and the postwar economic boom.
The American social contract was simple: work hard, play by the rules, and you could buy a house, send your kids to college, and maybe take a vacation once in a while.
This decent middle-class life was “the American Dream.” It didn’t happen by accident; it was the result of deliberate government action—policies that promoted and strengthened unions, Social Security, the GI Bill, and a tax code that asked the rich to pay their fair share.
They Couldn’t Win The Argument, So Republicans Changed the Subject
Republicans knew they couldn’t win on policy because their policies are designed to enrich the rich at everyone else's expense.
So, how do you convince people who are part of a thriving middle class—whose grandparents had a living memory of how Republicans not only cultivated the Great Depression, but kept millions on the breadlines—to vote against their own interests?
You don’t. You change the subject.
You manufacture outrage and division. You build a propaganda machine to roll back the New Deal, one “socialism” screed at a time. You stoke division about mythical “welfare queens” and racial resentment against “young bucks” buying steak with food stamps. You point fingers down at those lower on the ladder, pitting working people against each other, while those at the top ride the curated resentments to the bank.
Over time, under the cover of outrage machines, you unravel the New Deal, drag us back through the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and even the American Revolution—until we’re firmly entrenched in the kiss-up/kick-down system of intergenerational wealth and power that the American experiment was founded to combat. As life got harder for the working class, propaganda outlets ensure the blame is pointed firmly away from those at the top reaping the rewards.
Sadly for Nixon, “GOP TV” didn’t materialize in time to save him from his crimes, but the seeds were planted. Decades later, Murdoch’s billions made Ailes’ dream a reality, with Fox News spearheading the right-wing outrage machine now drowning American democracy in a rising tsunami of lies and grievance.
What Dems Need to Win—a Spine and a Megaphone
To survive—and win—Democrats must do more than send sternly worded letters to a party and a president untethered from reality and the rule of law. We need a full-blown, unapologetic, relentless counteroffensive.
Here’s what Democrats must do to break the right-wing curse strangling this country:
Call Out the Disinformation Machine—Every. Single. Time.
Every time a Democrat is in front of a camera or microphone, they need to remind Americans that Fox News is not news—it’s a billionaire-funded propaganda mill designed to make people stupid and keep them angry at the wrong people. Call out right-wing influencers for what they are: traitors, many with ties to foreign money and anti-American interests. Don’t let a single lie slide. We have to fight every battle. Correct every lie. We cannot count on the American people to figure out the lies—we have to point them out. Yes, the truth will set us all free—but first it’ll piss off the right-wingers. If we’re not making the them squirm, we’re not doing it right.
Flood the Zone with Progressive Storytellers
The right figured out decades ago that controlling the narrative means controlling reality. The Mercer family and their ilk pumped millions into Breitbart, building a propaganda Death Star targeting us all. Meanwhile, progressive creators scramble to keep the lights on.
Where are our progressive billionaires? Where’s the George Soros or George Clooney of the left funding a serious counterweight to the right-wing disinformation machine? If you’re a Democrat with a checkbook, fund independent media like Political Voices Network, Tarabuster, and every scrappy progressive creator out there. We need to meet Americans wherever they are—TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, newsletters—with loud, clear, and relentless truth-telling.
Establish a Daily Democratic Press Secretary
My “Tara Show” partner and co-host, Tara Dublin, regularly advocates for the Democratic Party to have its own press secretary holding daily “White House Press Briefings.”
Forget the fascist freaks heaping praise on their Dim Leader’s anti-American destruction—give legitimate press the opportunity to stop being stenographers for lying Karoline Leavitt and abandon the White House Press Room clown show.
Hold daily meetings to counter Trump’s incessant lies and set the record straight for the American people.
Replace Jargon with Jarring Narratives
Stop with the bloodless policy speak. Say it plain: “Republicans want your daughter to die of sepsis in a parking lot.” That’s not hyperbole—it’s happening.
Republicans are stripping away rights, safety nets, and dignity. Democrats need to tell real stories about the real consequences of right-wing rule. Make it personal, visceral, and impossible to ignore.
Embrace Populist Rage
Enough with the “we go high” routine while Republicans dig for the sewer main.
Democrats need to be the party of Main Street, not Wall Street. Period.
Stop speaking to the populist rage in public while courting billionaires and GOP donors in the shadows. Run on taxing private jets, jailing price-gouging CEOs, and stripping government contracts from oligarch parasites like Elon Musk. It’s a patriotic imperative to tax the rich down to reasonableness or they will destroy democracy for good.
Get Money Out of Politics
A “donor class” is anathem to freedom and democracy. Money in politics is the root of all this evil. Democrats have to start running on public campaign financing. The day we get money out of politics is the day grifters like Trump abandon so-called “public service” for a more lucrative scam.
Follow these simple steps, and watch the Democratic Party brand regain its appeal.
Human beings are storytellers. Just as the American Revolution began in tea shops where colonists shared pamphlets about radical ideas of liberty and equality, we have to unflinchingly spread the truth about which party is on the side of the American working class. At the moment, the Democratic Party is what’s standing between democracy and tyranny. It’s not just essential we reclaim the narrative, it’s a patriotic imperative.
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